Sad to say White Sand didn’t quite work for me. That’s a first for me and Brandon Sanderson, but in this instance, I’m hesitant to count it. I didn’t realize until I opened this book up that Sanderson didn’t actually write it.
Okay, but wait, let me back up a little.
So White Sand is actually Brandon Sanderson’s first completed novel. He put it away for a while after writing it, and then brought it out years later to revamp it, but ultimately, it was never published. When a comics publisher solicited him, asking if he had any unpublished stories they could turn into graphic novels, this sprang to mind. Since I heard about the project last year, I’ve been excited to read it, but I definitely would have been less so had I realized Sanderson wasn’t writing it himself; that somebody else would be adapting it.
I’m not entirely sure that was my main problem with it, but I’m pretty sure it’s a significant one. I mean, the numbers are on my side here. I’ve never given anything by Brandon Sanderson less than four stars before, and he has written a SHIT TON OF BOOKS.
Also, I could just tell that the story and the world were great. It was the actual writing of it, the dialogue, the exposition, the structuring of it, that didn’t quite fit for me.
I think my other main problem with this graphic novel is that it’s a graphic novel. All the stuff that makes a Brandon Sanderson story come alive–the details, the length, the interior narratives of the characters, the worldbuilding–none of it worked as well as I wanted it to. It was too condensed, and parts of it were so obviously and awkwardly exposition-heavy that I ended up turning on the book pretty early. It was only the bones of the story that pulled me back in.
I guess I could be wrong about the statement I’m making here, but what makes epic fantasy great so much of the time is the stuff that you just can’t get across in a comic (at least, not one at this length). You need depth and breadth and details and room so that you don’t have to explain everything in exposition bubbles. You need time as a reader to sink into the world.
I’ll read the next two volumes because it’s Brandon Sanderson (and I found the art intriguing), but as soon as I finished this, I emailed Mr. Sanderson using the form on his website, and finally asked for a digital copy of the novel White Sand, which you have long been able to request from him as long as you promise not to talk about it publicly. I’m very excited to read that version of the story, and I’m pretty certain it will give me what I wanted from this one.